1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and an apparatus for inspecting solder portions on, for example, a printed circuit board.
2. Description of the Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,916 discloses a method of inspecting solder joints that connect surface-mount electronic components to printed circuit boards. The method of U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,916 includes the steps of obtaining an image of a plurality of the leads of the electronic component, representing segments of the image that correspond to each of the leads by polygons, projecting each of pixel intensity values within each polygon onto an axial dimension to provide a measured waveform, comparing the measured waveform for each lead with a corresponding model waveform, and classifying each lead as being either satisfactory or unsatisfactory on the basis of the comparisons.